Digital editions of magazines and newspapers have become extremely popular in recent years with the advent of intelligent tablets, such as Apple's iPad™, Google's Nexus™, or Microsoft's Surface™. Consequently, print publishers feel a growing need to offer a digital version of their publications, which have traditionally only been available in printed form.
While many publishers offer a web, on-line version of their publications, this service is often limited by the bandwidth available for use by the user's electronic device, and does not allow for off-line consultation of the complete edition when the device is no longer connected to the internet, such as when on a plane, as but one example. In addition, it is known that many readers consulting news websites merely skim through the headlines, without thoroughly reading the articles themselves.
In addition to websites, some renowned newspapers and magazines offer a downloadable, digital version of their printed edition, which may be consulted either off-line or on-line. Some publishers offer their own application for viewing these publications, such as USAToday™, while other publishers use widely-available programs such as Adobe Viewer™, Zinio™ and Kiosque™, to name a few. There is thus a wide spectrum of applications for tablets, desktops and/or laptops which allow for the downloading and reading of digital editions.
Most digital editions are provided in Adobe™'s pdf format, offering little or no interactivity to the users, in addition to being time-consuming and bulky to download. This may be one of the reasons why tablet users are not embracing digital editions of magazines and newspapers as expected. The Daily™'s newspaper experiment, offering a tablet-only publication (The Daily™), ceased after only two years of operation, demonstrating that a viable model for digital newspapers had yet to appear.
One drawback of some existing viewer applications is that they do not allow users to start reading their digital publication unless the publication has been completely downloaded. Another limitation of existing applications is that downloading of the digital publication is made sequentially, according to a preset order, one page after the other. While this standard downloading mode may be suitable for readers of books or movies, which are read or viewed chronologically, it is not always well suited for readers of magazines or newspapers, some of whom may first want to flip through the entire edition before deciding which sections to read thoroughly. In addition, these sections are not necessarily the first sections in the edition.
It is also known that a user's “waiting tolerance” for the download of digital content is only of a few seconds. It is thus a challenge for publishers to deliver digital editions of magazines or newspapers that are both rich in content, interactive, with high-quality images and/or animations, and also which may also be consulted rapidly, without further delaying readers from accessing content of the edition.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,477,331 to WEI et al. relates to an apparatus and a method for creating an electronic version of a printed newspaper or of a magazine. The creation of the electronic version of the newspaper requires scanning the printed newspaper.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,747,970 to SANCHEZ et al. relates to systems and methods for receiving preview content on a mobile device and for displaying more detailed information upon request by the user of the mobile device. The preview content sent to the mobile devices is web-based content which is broadcasted, in contrast with compiled content sent to a dedicated software application.
Also known to the Applicant are U.S. Pat. No. 8,131,093; U.S. Pat. No. 8,209,623; US 2011/0173188; US 2008/0271095 and US 2012/0096094.
Hence, in light of the aforementioned, there is a need for an improved system and method for allowing users to rapidly have access to a digital edition, without sacrificing content size and/or quality of the edition.